Christianity around the world

Christianity in Brazil

Brazil holds the largest number of Christians in Latin America and long has had the largest Roman Catholic population of any nation. The faith arrived with Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century and shaped the culture for centuries. In recent decades Brazil has also seen one of the most dramatic Protestant and Pentecostal expansions anywhere, so that today it is home to a vast Catholic majority and a large and growing evangelical community.

How Christianity came to Brazil

Christianity came to Brazil with Portugal. When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, Catholic priests came with them, and the first Mass was celebrated on the new shore. Jesuits such as Jose de Anchieta and Manuel da Nobrega worked among indigenous peoples and helped found cities like Sao Paulo. Over the colonial centuries Catholicism became the faith of the land, blending in popular devotion with the cultures of indigenous peoples and of Africans brought in slavery, a mixture still visible in Brazilian festivals and patron saints.

Protestant Christianity arrived later, with immigrants and missionaries in the nineteenth century. But the great change came in the twentieth: Pentecostalism, which began early in the century and grew explosively, especially among ordinary and poorer Brazilians, through churches such as the Assemblies of God and later many homegrown movements. This is one of the largest religious shifts of modern times.

The church here today

Brazil remains home to the world's largest Roman Catholic population, and Catholic faith still runs deep in family and public life. At the same time, evangelical and Pentecostal Christians now make up a large and rising share of the population, with a strong presence in worship, media, and neighborhood life. Between them, Christians of one kind or another form the great majority of Brazilians.

If you are seeking here

If you are living in Brazil and quietly wondering about Jesus, you are not alone, and you are welcome. Faith is not a nationality or a family tradition you are locked into or out of; it begins wherever one person turns to Christ and asks. You can start today by reading a Gospel, by praying honestly in your own words, and by finding a community that follows Jesus near you.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brazil a Catholic country?

Brazil has long had the largest Roman Catholic population of any nation, and Catholic faith runs deep in its culture. In recent decades, however, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has grown dramatically alongside it.

Why has Pentecostalism grown so fast in Brazil?

Pentecostal and evangelical churches spread widely through the twentieth century, especially among ordinary and poorer Brazilians, offering vibrant worship and close community, in one of the largest religious shifts of modern times.

How did Christianity come to Brazil?

With Portuguese colonization from 1500, when Catholic priests and later Jesuits established the faith, which blended over the centuries with indigenous and African cultures into a distinctively Brazilian Catholicism.